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Part 3 of 8
Honest to God series
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The church is not a building, institution, or name. The church is all of us—the followers of Christ. The Bible refers to the church as the body of Christ with Jesus as the head, the maximum authority, and also as Jesus's bride.
We sometimes use "Church" with a capital C to refer to every single follower of Christ around the world who together form the body of Christ. Then there's the local church—the local group or community of believers that gather regularly to worship together and contribute to God's kingdom. They're the same thing; it's simply that we cannot do life with every believer around the world.
If we really understand that we are the church, we can have the right expectations. When we expect the church to feed the poor, take care of widows, disciple the next generation, bless communities, and be a light in darkness—you realize that you are the church, right? It's not "the church should do this" or "why doesn't the church do that." The real question is: why don't you do it?
When we see everything that's wrong with the church—hypocrisy, lack of compassion, spiritual apathy, lost first love—again, you are the church. You cannot separate yourself from it or point your finger from the outside. When you criticize the church, you're actually criticizing yourself. You may not do the specific things you're pointing out, but you certainly contribute with other issues. We are all part of what needs to change.
There's a trending idea that we should "go back to the early church." People point to a few chapters in Acts where believers were united in purpose, attended the temple daily, shared possessions, ate together, experienced miracles, and the word was preached. Beautiful. But this romanticized version ignores the reality.
As early as chapter five of Acts, we read about a man who sold property, kept some money for himself, but lied to appear more generous. He and his family died. This happened roughly 30 years after Jesus ascended to heaven. Sin started very early.
Later in Acts, apostles disagreed about doctrinal issues so severely that they had to separate. Paul's letters to the churches address serious problems already happening in the first 50 to 60 years: incest, sexual sin, lying, idolatry, and false prophets. And these were churches founded by the apostles themselves.
I'm not saying these things are acceptable. Yes, we can learn from the early church. But the church has never been perfect. There has always been sin in the church because there have always been humans in it. The idea that the church is now worse than ever is a lie. We've always had the same issues; we simply didn't have social media broadcasting it everywhere.
I'm not saying this to adopt a mediocre mentality—"Well, we're all humans, so it'll always be like this." No. Our Savior gave his all to make us his church. We should give our all to honor him. What we carry as a church is so precious that we should do our best to be a reflection of that treasure.
As Paul writes in Ephesians 4:
I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, urge you to live in a way that is worthy of the calling to which you have been called, demonstrating all expressions of humility, gentleness, and patience, accepting one another in love. Do your best to maintain the unity of the spirit by means of the bond of peace. There is one body and one spirit. Likewise, you were called to the one hope of your calling. There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all, through all, and in all.
This should be our goal. We should work hard every day to live this way. But we need to be realistic about what the church is and change our mentality. The church is not for you. The church is you for the world. It's very different.
I think it's very important we define what "hurt" actually means, because nowadays we use big terms very lightly. When we feel sad or go through a difficult season, we say "my depression." But clinical depression is something very serious—you're just a little sad. When you're organized and like things in order, you say "my OCD." Not really. When you're busy and stressed, you say "my anxiety."
Do we even know what these terms really mean? We use big words lightly, self-diagnose or get easy diagnoses, and play with serious terminology based on temporary feelings. Unfortunately, this trend has infiltrated the church.
If a life group leader tells you a hard truth you don't want to hear, you call that judgment or public shaming. If the church makes a decision without your input, that's abuse of authority. Everyone on a big stage with social media has narcissistic issues. If your feedback isn't taken into consideration, that's spiritual abuse. We wrap all of this under "church hurt" just because it makes us feel hurt.
Here's the truth: Your feelings are real—you feel them—but they may not necessarily be true. I know it's considered offensive to question how people feel. We've given feelings so much authority over our lives. But that's the danger: we take our feelings as fact. Jeremiah says, "The heart is more deceitful than anything." We've fallen into the trap that if we feel a certain way, then that's the way it is. And if anybody questions it, we say they're victim-shaming.
All I'm saying is: when you feel hurt—and you will feel hurt—could we just stop for a second and in prayer ask ourselves: Did somebody actually hurt me? Did somebody really act with bad intentions? Did somebody actually cause harm to me or to someone else? Because it's not the same thing to feel hurt as it is to get hurt.
And I want to be very clear because this needs to be acknowledged: unfortunately and very sadly, there is real hurt in the church. There's real abuse. There's real betrayal. When we use these big words so lightly, we're being disrespectful to people actually suffering. It also deviates our mindset as a church from being mission-oriented to status-oriented. Instead of focusing on our mission—which includes healing the wounded—we become fixated on how everybody feels about everything all the time.
I've been a pastor's wife for almost 17 years. I can tell you one thing about pastors: pastors get hurt a lot. I don't know why people feel they have the right to say anything they want about their pastor or to their pastor's face. Pastors can never win. If they're overweight, they're struggling with gluttony. If they're fit, they're vain. If they vacation too much, they're misspending offerings. If they don't vacation, they're not taking care of their families.
But you don't see hateful podcasts with pastors saying, "This church member exposed," detailing hurtful things said in the foyer, calling members hypocrites, telling people to avoid them. Pastors aren't exempt from pain and hurt. Pastors are also members of the church. They're part of the body. The enemy tries to create divisions as if it were pastors against congregations. We're all one church. Maybe the message for some of you is that you need to pray for your pastors or apologize to one you've hurt with your words.
If you have been hurt in the church, I want to say: I'm so sorry. Genuinely, I'm so sorry that you were hurt in the house of the Lord. You went to a place where you should have found hope and healing and found the opposite. You should have found people to help you find freedom and healing, who would point you to Jesus. Instead, you ended up hurt, confused, and maybe even more lonely than before.
That's not what God wanted for you. That's not what was supposed to happen. The church is broken. The church still needs her Savior every day. But God doesn't want you to stay in your hurt. God wants to heal you, give you hope, and help you move forward in your walk with him.
The first mistake people make when hurt in the church is to get mad at the church or even at God. But listen: The church didn't hurt you. Somebody in the church hurt you. God didn't hurt you. Somebody in his church hurt you.
The enemy will try to isolate you and make you believe you can never trust God or his church again. But God will never fail you. He will never hurt you. He will never disappoint you. His church will always belong to him. Don't walk away from the church. Don't walk away from God. We get disappointed in the church because we expect too much from it. But we get disappointed in God because we expect too little. We need to change our thinking about this.
Something we often forget is the importance of unity in the church—for all of us to be one in Christ. This isn't just a pretty idea. In John 17, Jesus prays moments before his arrest and crucifixion. He knows the end is coming. After praying for his current disciples and reflecting on fulfilling God's will on earth, there's a beautiful portion of his prayer for disciples who would come after them—meaning us.
This is the only prayer registered in the Bible that Jesus makes specifically for the future church. There are many teachings, instructions, and commandments for the church, but this is the only recorded prayer Jesus made for it. So what did he ask?
I ask not only on behalf of these men, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their message, so that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me and I am in you. May they also be one in us so that the world may believe that you sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me so that they may be one just as we are one. I am in them and you are in me. May they be completely one so that the world may know that you sent me and that you have loved them as you loved me.
Four times he asks the same thing: May they be one. He could have asked, "May they love me with all their hearts. May they be compassionate and feed the poor. May they preach the gospel boldly." But no—the one thing, the one thing he prayed for: may they be one.
For what purpose? So that the world may know that God sent him and has loved them as he loved Jesus. The most effective strategy to reach the unreached is to be one. The most effective way to testify about God's love is to be one. The most effective way to make the world believe in God is for his church to be one.
Think about it. The world is messed up. There's division everywhere. Everybody only cares about themselves. Everybody wants to impose their opinions. Everybody fights about everything. How will the church stand out? How will the church show there's a different way? How will the church preach convincingly about God's love? By being united.
Why do you think unity is the church's greatest weakness? It's the one thing most attacked. We're constantly under attack, but unity is the number one target of our enemy against the church. And we so easily fall into that trap.
When the time comes—not if, when—when we must take action against sin, we should keep this in mind: keeping unity within the church is our number one priority.
I'm not saying to cover up sin or stay silent about what's wrong. I'm not saying to hush everybody for the sake of unity. Our goal should be reconciliation. But don't bash the church on social media saying everything that's wrong with it. We're supposed to rule the world with Christ one day, yet what we do is go out to the world and vent our problems within the church. We fight each other in front of everyone watching.
It wasn't the whole church that wronged you—a person or small group of people in the church wronged you. When you publicly trash the church, you're hurting the whole church. How does that help the church get better? How does that help our mission?
Our goal when addressing wrongdoing should always be reconciliation—not cover-up, but not public destruction either. Don't bash the church on social media listing everything wrong with it. Yes, we're supposed to rule the world with Christ one day, yet we go out to the world and vent our problems within the church, fighting each other in front of everyone watching.
Remember: it wasn't the whole church that wronged you. A person or small group of people in the church wronged you. When you publicly trash the church, you're hurting the whole church. How does that help the church get better? How does that help our mission? How would that help the non-believer hesitant to even come? How would that help the world to know that God sent Jesus and loves them as he loved Jesus?
Act against the sin, not the church.
Consider Paul, previously known as Saul. He was a well-educated man, a member of the Sanhedrin—one of the most elite and respected groups of Bible teachers at that time. When Jesus's followers started preaching the gospel and the church began growing, he started persecuting them, having them arrested or even killed.
We might think Paul was simply evil. But he wasn't. He was a very religious man, genuinely protective of the integrity of God's word. He was truly worried that people were spreading false teachings. In his mind, he was proactively defending the word of God. Back then, the punishment for heresy was death, so he believed he was doing God's will—doing the right thing.
Then Jesus appeared to him on the road to Damascus. Listen to what Jesus asked him: "Why are you persecuting me?" Paul replied, "Who are you, Lord?" And Jesus said, "I am Jesus whom you are persecuting."
Paul wasn't persecuting Jesus directly—Jesus was long gone to heaven. He was persecuting the believers, the church. Yet Jesus asked, "Why are you persecuting me?" Because if you persecute Jesus's church, he takes it very personal. It's like Jesus saying, "If you mess with my church, you're messing with me."
Yes, we must act against sin, but be very careful to never act against his church. Amen.
Another mistake we make when hurt in the church is trying to fix the problem ourselves. There are three things the Bible says Jesus does and will do for his church.
In Matthew 16:18, Jesus says: "And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it."
The original Greek word is ecclesia—similar to the Spanish eglesia. This word means a summoned group of people. It was used when people were convened to deliberate on something, an assembly called for a specific purpose.
Jesus said, "I will build my people. I will build my group of followers that I called for my specific purpose. Even when things go bad, even when things get messy, I will keep building my church and nothing will prevail against it."
Isn't that a relief? Doesn't that fill you with hope? Even though we are broken and sometimes messed up, the church will continue because Jesus has taken upon himself to build his body. This also means the church will go on with or without you. And I don't know about you, but I want to be on board.
In Ephesians 5:25, Paul compares what a husband should do for his wife to what Jesus does for his bride:
The Messiah loved the church and gave himself for it so that he might make it holy by cleansing it, washing it with water and the word. And that he might present the church to himself in all its glory without a spot or wrinkle or anything of the kind, but holy and without fault.
Isn't this beautiful? Such sweet and tender love from Jesus to his church.
You and I cannot cleanse the church. We cannot fix the church. Honestly, can you even clean yourself? Can you even fix yourself? Only God can do that. We can rest in this truth. He will cleanse his church. He will fix everything that is wrong with it—some things in this life, some things in the next. Sometimes we'll see it; sometimes we won't. But it will happen.
There is hurt caused unintentionally. There is hurt caused by true believers who mess up. And there is hurt caused by evil people who infiltrate the church to steal, kill, and destroy. Jesus will take care of all of that, too.
The Bible describes God's church as Jesus's bride. In Revelation 19, at the end of times, Jesus will come back and there will be a wedding. There will be a church—his bride—presented to him wearing fine linen, dazzling and pure.
Here's a beautiful illustration: The church is the bride, and local churches are the bridesmaids. On the day of the wedding, what do bridesmaids do? They're not there to tear down the bride, critiquing her appearance. They're not there to make her beautiful for the groom either—the groom already thinks she's the most beautiful woman on earth and is madly in love with her.
They are there to cheer her on, to tell her how beautiful she is, to tell her that everything will be all right, to take care of all the small details, to defend her. If she forgets the rings, they'll run out and get them. They'll hold her bridal bouquet, do makeup touch-ups, fluff her dress, and fix the veil so it looks right in the pictures.
My prayer is that we could do our part and let God do his. That Lakepointe as a bride will be ready when the day comes. That Lakepointe as a bridesmaid, as the local church, will cheer on the bride and defend the bride by serving Jesus.
If you have been hurt or disappointed in the church, I pray that you can find peace and rest—that one day he will make everything right. Our Savior, our Groom, will come for us. The one who loved us and gave his life for us. The one who rescued us and keeps defending us and caring for us. And he will cleanse us all and make us radiant for him.
